Milwaukee Public Museum

We drove Karen to the Milwaukee airport yesterday for her trip to CA.  Lucky brat ;).  Since we have never been to the Public Museum in Milwaukee we decided to check it out.  Totally worth it!  We had so much fun that I almost forgot to take pictures.  Here are the only two I took.

Kids posing with the mummy, Djed-Hor.

Zach in "The Streets of Old Milwaukee" exhibit.

We also went to the planetarium.  The special effects were neat and all, but my vertigo kicked in to high gear.  By the time it was over I was in the bathroom wishing I would have skipped it.  Plus, it was more like a history lesson than learning about the stars.  Ironically, the planetarium at Wausau West is better.  This experience was more like going to a movie as we zipped around through "time" and learned about how different cultures viewed the night sky.  We spent more time learning about the cultures and "star-gazers"  than the stars.  That was fine and interesting and all but, it wasn't what I was hoping for.  The Wausau West planetarium gets dark, like super dark.  Those of you who went to school there or visited it know what I'm talking about.  You actually get to learn about the night sky.  Granted, the Milwaukee planetarium did have a different showing about the Wisconsin night sky and maybe that would have been more to my liking, but it was playing at a later time so we pick the "Ancient Skies" showing instead.

All in all, I would definitely go again.  There was a lot we missed, but by the time we were done, we were exhausted!

Easter 2015

It's hard to blog when you don't have a computer.  I tired doing it once on my smart phone but it was such a pain I gave up.  Anyway, we recently bought a desktop so I will try and update more often.  At least when I can get it from the kids, sigh.

Easter was absolutely gorgeous this year. Not just the weather but the company too.  Matt was a culinary master and did most of the cooking all weekend.



His shrimp linguine was yummy.  I didn't eat the shrimp, but it gave the noodles a delicious flavor.

The next day (Monday), I had little white sores in my mouth and my lips burned,  since I get cold sores and canker sores easily I recognized these were different, so I used webmd.com and it thought it might be thrush.  Looking at the symptoms it matched.  So, I got unrefined coconut oil to help heal it. It helped sooth my lips so I thought I was on the right path. Cue the leftover shrimp tainted linguine for supper...YAY!

Tuesday: My lips were swollen, felt like they were on fire and tinted orange.  The sores were worse, and now my throat hurt and it was hard to swallow.  I just thought the "thrush" was working it's way through my system and there have been colds going around so I attributed the sore throat to that.  Sure enough the swelling went down through out the day.   Since it hurt to eat it was yogurt and soup for me that day.

Day 3, Wednesday morning, I woke up with still painful swollen lips, the sores in my mouth multiplied and I could barely swallow.  I had to work at the YMCA that morning and the members all noticed.  They made me promise I would go to the doctor.  Luckily, my shift ends at 8am so I was able to get to the doctor rather early.

When she looked me over she said I definitely showed signs of a food allergy and prescribed me an Epipen.  Shrimp is our best guess since I was only introduced to it recently.  I had the same shrimp linguine at my friend's house about a month ago, but the doc. explained the symptoms of a food allergy increase with each exposure.  She said I most likely didn't notice the first time.  Now that I think back on it, I did get a nasty sore on my chin around that time but I dismissed it as just a cold sore.

She said what probably saved me was the fact that I didn't eat the shrimp directly and on Tuesday night I took Benadryl which kept my symptoms down - especially in my throat.  The doctor was baffled that up to this point in my life I'd never had shrimp.  Technically, I still have never eaten shrimp.  When I said I grew up Kosher she was confused because she thought that only had to do with eating pork, LOL.  I had to explain Jewish/Old Testament eating customs.  That piqued her interest in reading the Bible.  The Lord does work in mysterious and wonderful ways!

Since my symptoms were on the mend by the time I saw her, she recommended I just continue with the Benadryl for a while.  They scheduled an allergy test in May to see if there is anything else I'm not aware of because of my Kosher upbringing.  So far, I'm improving everyday and I thank the Lord for keeping me safe.

Samantha learning how to use an Epipen with a "practice" Epipen.